1805
Difficulties of my situation at Hamburg--Toil and responsibility--
Supervision of the emigrants--Foreign Ministers--Journals--Packet
from Strasburg--Bonaparte fond of narrating Giulio, an extempore
recitation of a story composed by the Emperor.
The brief detail I have given in the two or three preceding chapters of
the events which occurred previously to and during the campaign of
Austerlitz, with the letters of Duroc and Bernadotte, may afford the
reader some idea of my situation during the early part of my residence in
Hamburg. Events succeeded each other with such incredible rapidity as to
render my labour excessive. My occupations were different, but not less
laborious, than those which I formerly performed when near the Emperor;
and, besides, I was now loaded with a responsibility which did not attach
to me as the private secretary of General Bonaparte and the First Consul.
I had, in fact, to maintain a constant watch over the emigrants in
Altona, which was no easy matter--to correspond daily with the Minister
for Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Police--to confer with the
foreign Ministers accredited at Hamburg--to maintain active relations
with the commanders of the French army--to interrogate my secret agents,
and keep a strict surveillance over their proceedings; it was, besides,
necessary to be unceasingly on the watch for scurrilous articles against
Napoleon in the Hamburg 'Corespondent'. I shall frequently have occasion
to speak of all these things, and especially of the most marked
emigrants, in a manner less irregular, because what I have hitherto said
may, in some sort, be considered merely as a summary of all the facts
relating to the occurrences which daily passed before my eyes.
In the midst of these multifarious and weighty occupations I received a
packet with the Strasburg postmark at the time the Empress was in that
city. This packet had not the usual form of a diplomatic despatch, and
the superscription announced that it came from the residence of
Josephine. My readers, I venture to presume, will not experience less
gratification than I did on a perusal of its contents, which will be
found at the end of this chapter; but before satisfying the curiosity to
which I have perhaps given birth, I may here relate that one of the
peculiarities of Bonaparte was a fondness of extempore narration; and it
appears he had not discontinued the practice even after he became
Emperor.
In fact, Bonaparte, during the first year after his elevation to the
Imperial throne, usually passed those evenings in the apartments of the
Empress which he could steal from public business. Throwing himself on a
sofa, he would remain absorbed in gloomy silence, which no one dared to
interrupt. Sometimes, however, on the contrary, he would give the reins
to his vivid imagination and his love of the marvelous, or, to speak more
correctly, his desire to produce effect, which was perhaps one of his
strongest passions, and would relate little romances, which were always
of a fearful description and in unison with the natural turn of his
ideas. During those recitals the ladies-in-waiting were always present,
to one of whom I am indebted for the following story, which she had
written nearly in the words of Napoleon. "Never," said this lady in her
letter to me, "did the Emperor appear more extraordinary. Led away by
the subject, he paced the salon with hasty strides; the intonations of
his voice varied according to the characters of the personages he brought
on the scene; he seemed to multiply himself in order to play the
different parts, and no person needed to feign the terror which he really
inspired, and which he loved to see depicted in the countenances of those
who surrounded him." In this tale I have made no alterations, as can be
attested by those who, to my knowledge, have a copy of it. It is curious
to compare the impassioned portions of it with the style of Napoleon in
some of the letters addressed to Josephine.
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